The program aims to create knowledge useful in informing policies for managing climate-related risks.
There is an increasing need to quantify risk in a multi-hazard context with quantitative methodologies that remain valid from local to national and global scales. The program aims to expand risk analysis tools to applications that are increasingly shown to be influenced by and related to risk itself, such as food and health security, disaster- and climate change-induced migration, and interactions between natural hazards and conflict. The program will also focus cross-cuttingly on the role of gender disparities in determining exposure and vulnerability to risk and related specific risks related to post-disaster conditions.
The program aims to push projects capable of combining the experience gained in the development of probabilistic risk assessment models, so far mainly focused on capturing the dynamics of hazard factors, with new techniques for dynamically formulating future scenarios that take into account both the interactions between different types of risk and the deeper impacts on social functioning and the evolutionary dynamics of the exposed and their vulnerability.
The methodologies developed and implemented in the program must also combine physically based models with data and information of heterogeneous origin and quality, particularly those obtainable through participatory approaches and direct community involvement, ensuring a knowledge of risk that enhances both scientific information and that derived from direct experience on the ground. In this sense, metrics derived from risk assessments must be linkable to concrete and feasible risk reduction and mitigation measures and, when possible, be articulated in cost-benefit analyses that support stakeholders in evaluating them.